I WISH I WERE TALLER

3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

            I am mysteriously drawn to a TV show called House.  I can’t say why.  The lead character, Dr. Gregory House, is an arrogant, irreverent, and distant man.  And yet, he is a brilliant diagnostician.  Dr. House leads a team of young experts who together try to solve the most difficult medical mysteries that present themselves to the hospital.  House is always able to discover what is wrong with the patient.  His talent is a wonderful thing to witness.  On the human side, House seems totally incapable of sustaining meaningful relationships.  He won’t let anyone get close to him, even though he needs the help of others sometimes.  Because House lives with chronic pain, he takes prescription drugs to which he has slowly become addicted.  His coworkers have become a kind of family to him, but he doesn’t see it.  They surround him with their love as he fights or fails to fight his addiction.  House regularly dismisses the support that surrounds him.  These friends, his coworkers, are a caring family.  That reality is right there before him, but he cannot see it.

            Well, talk about a reality right before us, there is one Paul wants the Christians in Corinth to see.  He wants to be sure that they won’t fail to see it, because this reality defines who they are.  This reality gives them their identity.  But the Corinthians must recognize this reality to live out their life as God intends.  Paul wants all the Christians in Corinth to see that they are members of the one body of Christ.  They all became members of this one body when they were baptized.  They all died to sin and were buried with Christ in the waters of baptism.  They were all raised up out of those waters to new life in Christ.  Baptism was the beginning of their common life together.  This is what makes them all members of the one body of Christ.  This is what makes them one.  They came from different backgrounds—high breeding and low—but as people who have all been baptized, they have this one powerful event in common.  Though different, in Christ they are all one.  It’s a little like soldiers of various races and backgrounds all sharing the horrors of battle together.  They emerge from that experience with a powerful bond that makes them one.  Or citizens of a city become unified by their common suffering and struggle.  Many in Lancaster in 1994, who had not suffered their own losses, went about helping those who had.  People here became unified in its struggle to clean up a devastated city.  If these common struggles bring diverse people together, how much more so does the common foundation of diverse people being baptized into the one body of Christ.  All Christians are those who know that they are the ones for whom Christ has died.  They are all the ones who have been buried with Christ in baptism and raised from those waters to new life.  All Christians are members of this one body, the body of Christ, the church.  That’s what Paul wants the Corinthian Christians to see.  They all belong to one body.  They are all one.

            And yet, in that unity there is diversity.  The church, though one body, has many members.  There is diversity within unity.  The one body is made up of many members.  To illustrate diversity within the unity of the church, Paul uses the image of the human body.  The body functions as a unified whole, and yet it has a variety of organs that perform various needed functions for the body.  Let’s say that I want to walk from here to there.  My brain has to command muscles to move.  My eyes have to see where I am going so that I reach my destination and not bump into any harmful objects.  My ears have to help me keep my balance.  My arms help out in balancing my body.  What would happen if I removed a leg?  I would not be able to walk unaided.  What would happen if I removed a toe?  Walking and standing would be more difficult.  What would happen if I removed my eyes?  I would not see where I was going.  What would happen if I removed my ears?  I would not be able to balance myself and I would probably fall.  Never mind the organs that aid in the nourishment of the body, circulate blood to the body, or cover the body.  Your one body is made up of a variety of members that are indispensable to the function of the body.  Within the unity of the body is the diversity of the parts that make up the body.  Paul uses this illustration to help the Christians in Corinth to see the reality of their needed diversity within their unity.  The church, though one body, is made up of many indispensable parts that allow the body to function as a unit.

            Trouble is, some of the members of the body do not value their function highly enough.  The church suffers from its members’ “gift envy.”  Sam wants the function George has instead of his own.  Sally wishes she had Sarah’s gifts and function in the church; she thinks Sarah’s function is more important.  Confession:  I wish I were taller.  I wish I had the face of Brad Pitt.  I wish I had the speaking voice of James Earl Jones.  I wish I could sing like Placido Domingo, but I’d settle for the voice of Willie Nelson.  This is “gift envy.”  From the content of Paul’s letter, it appears that the people in the Corinthian church were saying, “I wish I could do what that other person can do.”  “I wish my function were more important to the body than my function is.”  “I wish I were the brain, not the big toe.”  From Paul’s side of the conversation, it appears that some church members in Corinth devalue their function in the body.  Such low self-estimation is not helpful.

            Of course, neither is overestimating your function.  Thinking too highly of your purpose within the body does not help you live out your unity with other members of the one body.  If it is not healthy to think too lowly of your function, it is also true that it is not helpful to think too highly of it either.  In high school, I overestimated by abilities as a musician.  I can see that now.  I was in the percussion section of the band and orchestra.  As a musician, I was okay; maybe average or even a little above; but not superior.  But I thought I was.  Cartoon:  A man in a clerical collar is reading the newspaper.  “Do you have any idea how many great preachers there are?” he asks his wife.  She answers, “There’s one less than you think!”  Well, there is one less great percussionist than I thought.  I thought I was better than those other percussionists in the school band and orchestra.  Now I think some were more talented than I was.  Confidence is a wonderful thing, but humility is the door to improvement.  As I overestimated my abilities and my function in the group, I thereby devalued the contributions of others in the percussion section.  When you read between the lines of Paul’s letter, it seems that some of the high-status church members in Corinth may have been overestimating the value of their contribution to the body while looking down their noses at others of a lower status.  In other words, one’s own gifts were taken by some to be more important, so the gifts of others were devalued of their importance.  In this case, the diversity of gifts was seen as a means of ranking other people lower.

            Let’s be clear about this one thing:  Diversity is God’s gift to the church.  Diversity is intended; it is not an accident.  There is diversity of gifts in the church because God has planned it that way.  What that means is that some people are not more important because they have one function while others are less important because they do this other thing.  The church has a variety of gifts because God has put them there.  Did you hear that?  The church has a variety of gifts because God has put them there for a purpose.  All of the parts are necessary.  So maybe I don’t have the speaking voice of James Earl Jones.  Maybe I can’t sing like Placido Domingo.  Maybe I’m not very tall.  I surely don’t have the looks of Brad Pitt.  But, you know what?  I don’t need those things to do what God wants me to do.  If God had made me taller, given me movie-star looks, a speaking voice like James Earl Jones, and the singing voice of Placido Domingo, I would not have been equipped to be a pastor but a movie star or an opera singer.  But that isn’t what God wants me to do.  God has called and equipped me to do the work of parish ministry.  And I love my vocation as a pastor!  I have done nothing in my life more fulfilling than serving where God has called me to serve.  Day after day I get to do what I would gladly do for free.  Someone once asked me what I’d like to be doing ten years from now, you know, when I retire.  I said that I’d like to be doing what I’m doing right now.  I don’t want to dig in the dirt.  I don’t want to spend long months traveling.  I want to serve the church while I still have the God-given gifts to do so.  The reason I have my gifts and not someone else’s is that it is in parish ministry God wants me to serve.  So I have the gifts that go with that function.  You get the idea?  I have the gift I have so that I can serve where I’m supposed to serve.  You have your gifts so that you can serve where you’re supposed to serve.  The gifts we have are not accidental.  God has allotted those gifts for the common good.  Because God has given the church a variety of gifts, the church has all the gifts it needs to do its ministry in the world.